Monday, June 20, 2011

Things are getting pretty slow at work right now. If there isn't anything for me to really chew on tomorrow I'm going to get John to find something for me. With my luck it's going to be something terrifying.

We had a farewell potluck for Bob today. He's resigning as the associate director of IT at the end of this month. Bob is pretty awesome, so I hope I see him around. He's still super involved with the Jazz Festival, so I'm sure I'll see him there. The potluck was pretty amazing today, people really stepped up. Well except for Quentin and I. We totally dropped the ball. So I ended up bringing plates and cutlery from the cabinet and he went with John and got more plates and pop or something. But everyone else was wicked awesome. I can't even begin to list what was made. I ate waaay too much. As always with the potlucks. I think the best part is always the food brought by our fine friends from the middle east. They know how to eat. Spices! I could seriously eat that all the time, it's no wonder they've become so known for their cuisine.

And of course Chelsea and I exchanged more ridiculous emails throughout the day. Makes it go by super fast. Until she had to leave early at 3:30, then I was left to my own devices. Testing a machine role is only so interesting.

Taught Will how to drive stick some more this evening. But first we went over to my parents place to give mom back her knives that Will had sharpened for her, he's good at that, and I gave her our damage cheque since she paid the whole thing at our old place. Also looked at some of the bikes my parents still had and did a little work on my dad's old bike and brought it home so I can start biking to work soon. I should be able to leave the house later in the morning and I'll be getting exercise. It's win win.

I tried taking Will to the exhibition grounds to practice driving stick, but they were all locked up. So we started out by Diefenbaker instead. Drove around there a bit, gave him some pointers, and got him to start smoothing out. He's getting a lot better pretty quickly. We hit the streets and he was doing super good. Only a couple stalls! Still needs more practice shifting, but he's pretty much got the ideas down. We stopped in at Dave's because we were in the area and I forgot my earbuds there on Friday. We ended up watching the end of Fright Night with him and Rhiannon, and then watched an episode of Hoarders. I'm not so bad.

Not much after that. Saw some epic lightning inside a giant cloud in the distance, so I dug out my rain coat. I tried finding it this morning but failed. Found it tonight, though, so that's awesome. Now I'll be prepared for the worse. Well except I forgot to make lunch again. Damnit. Gotta get on that.

Will's going to run me tomorrow. He's going to help me start eating better and exercise more. He runs so he's going to help me on that, and now that I've got a temporary bike that'll help also. We're going to sit down at some point and come up with some meals that I'll ALWAYS be able to make, and a grocery list to go with it. Set up a meal plan and try and stick with it so I always know what I can eat and have the stuff to make it with. I think it's a good step int he right direction. It isn't even about losing weight or looking better for me. It's about feeling good. I don't feel good these days, I don't have a lot of energy, and I can't do things for the length of time I feel I should. I need to reverse that before it gets too difficult. I should be in my prime but instead I'm just sitting about. A fix is at hand. I'm dreading it, but I know I need it. This is going to really suck...

Skype date with Tabi tomorrow! Excited! I'm passing through Calgary on Thursday, but I'll be missing her then. Hopefully we can meet up on Friday on the way back through. Nick and I still haven't worked out our details yet, all that's for sure is that I'm driving to Revvy on Thursday and we'll probably figure things out from there. Erik is super excited and so am I. I can't wait to see him and Liz and Tony. I miss those guys. I'm also hoping to have a visit with the family out in Calgary while I'm in town, too. Lunch probably won't work out since it's Thursday afternoon, but maybe Friday night or Saturday morning. Saturday morning would be pretty sweet. I'll have to give them a call soon.

That's all for now. Time to take a quick look at the internet and then get some sleep for tomorrow. For it's another day!

So I guess this will cover Friday and the weekend. Prepare for a long one! (That's what she said)

FridayEverybody's working for the weekend! Well most of us, anyway. Friday was pretty incident free at work. Worked on a user's computer that needed to be rebuilt after a possible intrusion, and sent many a ridiculous email. The biggest thing of note was probably all the rain that appeared that I was in no way prepared for. I checked the weather before I left and it said it was about 12 degrees, so I put on a bunnyhug before leaving. At lunch, however, things took a sudden turn: downpour! Epic downpour. I ran from Geology to FMD and was pretty soaked. It took all afternoon for my pants to dry, and my bunnyhug still wasn't dry by the end of the day. Luckily for me, Chelsea, one of the girls working in sustainability this summer, took pitty upon me and offered me a ride home. Score! She also stole my Zune transmitter. Less score. But I can't really use it very often anyway, the stereo in the Jeep is pretty much broken. Plus if it lets another Zune user enjoy awesome tunes in the best way possible, I'm all for it. Though I forgot it at home today soooo....

I was looking forward to Friday night pretty much all day. Midnight screening of the original Ninja Turtles movie! No rain on that parade. Or WAS there? More in a moment. Through our ridiculous email I convinced Chelsea to come to see it with me. So more score. Now for the rain part.

Will sent me a text from work around 7ish because they lost power and were closing the restaurant soon. They're right next to the Broadway Theatre, which had also lost power. They ended up closing and I went to pickup Will and that entire block on Broadway was completely offline. There was a sign on the Theatre door saying that the 7pm screening was cancelled but their 9:30 was still on. I gave the theatre a call around 10 to see what was up but there was no answer. So Chelsea and I took our chances and, after going on a smartie safari, which was a complete success, we went down the Broadway Theatre and it was awesomely lit up. Super score. Get some tickets, sit down, and watch some shenanigans in the theatre before the movies starts. So many Ninja Turtles in the audience. We sat next to a guy dressed as April O'Neil. And the movie was awesome. It was a weird cut that I've never seen before, though. There were a couple extended scenes, but there were little things missing. Like Mikey's nun-chuck battle, and Splinter's epic final line before killing the Shredder. Chelsea had never seen it before, but these omissions are cause for a rewatch soon.

SaturdaySaturday we were trying to have a LAN party. Corey Will and I all moved out towers into the dining room and got an epic setup going. And that's pretty much it. Only Nate and David came, and neither had a computer to bring. So there was a lot of Marvel vs Capcom being played while 3 people at a time played Starcraft and I played Battlefield by myself when Corey and Nate played 2v2. It wasn't a failure in that we still had a lot of fun, but it was pretty fail as far as the epic part went. We're going to try again sometime, but this time I'm not going to plan it. No one ever comes when I plan things. So that's Saturday. We played computer games in the dining room. It was fun. We drank some drinks.

SundaySunday was father's day. I went and got some groceries because I wanted to make Lamb kabobs for dad cause I'm awesome that way. I needed boneless lamb legs. The closest thing I could find was lamb shank. Frozen. On the bone. So I spent an hour, with Will's most appreciated help, cutting meat off of bone. Which I've never really done before, and I'm not sure I want to do again. But it was an adventure. The rest of it was pretty easy and in the end the scheduling of things wasn't that pushed back. Marinated the lamb with peppers in some awesome marinade I made. Took everything over to mom and dad's, skewered meat and lemons, grilled to perfection. I was really surprised how good it was. Not that I doubted myself, but it was pretty amazing. Normally if you ask my dad how something was, he'll say "not bad" if it was alright. I asked him if he liked his father's day kebabs and he said "You know what? That was pretty good! I've never really had lamb before, but that was pretty good". Translation: "Wow. That was awesome". So that's pretty sweet and made me feel pretty awesome too.

I think that about sums up the weekend.

OOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOOHOHO. OH.

I'm driving to Revelstoke on Thursday to pick up Nick!!! That's super exciting. I'm going to pick him up in Revvy, then we'll go to Calgary, both visit people, and then we'll come to Saskatoon! SO excited. SO EXCITED.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

I can't believe how fast time is passing by right now. It's already Thursday, and it's already the middle of June. Blows my mind.

Today I spent almost all of my day at work trying extract bookmark information from a database file for Google Chrome for a user who installed Chrome without authorization and had been working in it for quite a while and had all his work bookmarks in it. We effectively blacklisted Chrome yesterday after discovering that it was the gateway to the root of all our spam issues and comprimised users. Users have apparently been installing Chrome without authorization into their profiles, and because they don't have admin privileges, it won't patch. Unpatched Chrome = Bad news bears. Anyway, I had to try and get his bookmarks out of the Chrome database file so he could do his job. Long story short, it didn't even matter in the end because he had synced them with his home computer. Waste of time.

Other than that it was pretty routine. I rebuilt Bob's computer for him, rebuilt a comprimised computer, and hurried the day along with countless ridiculous emails. Subway for lunch. Pretty much standard fair.

Went to Dave's after work to play some Citadels. I never win. But it's still fun. We also went to Super 8 tonight, which was pretty fantastic. I think it's the best movie I've seen all year. I say that a lot. This time I mean it. I also say that a lot. This time I mean it. End logic loop.

Yeah, it was really good. Well done, well acted, fun, interesting. I'm sure the meta reviews will do a better job describing why. All I can really say is that it was a great time and a great movie.

Wow, second day and I already forgot. I'm a champ. Alright, let's just pretend it's Wednesday...

Today was pretty decent. Was not recovering from my time hanging out with Mr. Jack Daniels, so that was a plus. Had to redo some of the work we did on Tuesday because Q missed some and mislabelled other, and then there was just a bunch of ones we didn't do because we didn't think we had to but we really did. Also we spent all morning dealing with spam because of of the store keeper's email was compromised. Between trying to figure out how and dealing with scared users and users who wanted to give us a friendly word up, it was fun juggling. Nothing too bad though and it's all back in order. We're awesome.

I can't remember what I did all afternoon anymore. That's why it's important I do these on time... Lots of silly emails all day long, though. Purposely silly. Super awesome fun time. It made the whole day go by super fast, so that was a definite plus. Then right at the end of the day one of our sustainability officers (I swear sustainability just likes making trouble for me. You know who you are....) had a seemingly simple issue sending an email that turned into a total rebuild just to cover our bases to make sure her machine wasn't compromised. I don't know how people are installing some of this software. We had to set up a specific policy to prevent Chrome from launching because all these security issues we've been having are directly rooted in people installing Chrome without authorization in their local profiles. So we brought the hammer down on that.

The evening was pretty good, too. Made perigees and fried them with onions all proper like. Very super tasty. Then I got on the phone with Tabi again to help her set up her emails on her new iPhone. Which was interesting. The account I thought would be easy was hard and doesn't work yet, and the one I thought would be hard ended up setting itself up. So neat? I also got her to download Tiny Wings because it's the most fun I've had with an iPhone game and it's also the most adorable thing ever. I don't know how anyone could not love it. For real. Best thing ever.

I also don't remember what I wrote about yesterday so if I repeat.... Meh!

Might be going to Calgary next week to pick up Nick on his journey back to Saskatoon to visit. I'm pretty excited about that. Erik wants me to just keep driving through to Revy since it's only an extra 4 hours. Not out of the question. Drive to Calgary, visit Tabi and anyone else who wants to have lunch or something, then just keeeeep on going. Could be fun. Haven't decided the details yet. Just going to Calgary and meeting up with people for lunch and bringing Nick home would also be fine. Nick and I are supposed to get online now that he's got internet again and figure it out. We'll see what happens.

There's a midnight screening of Ninja Turtles at the Broadway Theatre this Friday. Definitely going to make it for that. Will is down, I'll see if I can form a small posse. I'm pretty excited. The first Ninja Turtles movie is one of my favourite movies of all time. Like actually. And I'm not ashamed of it in the least. Screw you guys who think otherwise. I'm awesome.

Then battlefield and bed. Things got pretty boring when I got off the phone with Tabi. So nothing to really report there.

Well I did get all caught up watching Red vs Blue. Watched all 8 seasons over the past couple weeks, and the first episode of season 9 this morning. Still pretty funny, and also got kind of epic and interesting at the same time. It's like the Matrix but without all that confusing eastern philosophy BS.

Yeah I think that's about it. I'll do better to keep on top of these things so I don't fall behind. Tonight I'll probably talk about how I had to do yesterdays today. We'll see.

I don't remember how I signed off last time, so I'll just say tah tah for now.

Edit:

Oh, it rained and thundered and hailed too. I got a couple pictures that I was going to use in this but I'm not on my laptop right now so I'll do it later.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Alright. I don't blog NEARLY enough, as evident by my last post being from January, and I can't remember all the cool things I do because, well, I suck at remembering things. So what I'm going to try and start doing is this;

Every night, after I get into bed and open my laptop to read the last of the Internet news for the night, I'm going to write what I did that day. No matter how boring or mundane. I'll do it. Alright. Here I go!

Actually today wasn't all that bad. Considering I was hanging out with Mr. Jack Daniels last night. Yesterday was Nick's birthday, so we had to celebrate, even if he's in Vancouver. Jack and Cheerios for breakfast, Nick on the phone at 613. Awesome. Anyways, long story short, 613 party all evening, woke up again at 6 this morning for work. Suuuuuper fun. So drained, brain fried. The bus ride was terrible, bumpy and sway....y... I didn't think I'd make it for a while. But I'm a trooper. Well not really but I'm trying. Luckily there wasn't anything super tough at work today, so it balanced out. I made it to lunch somehow, but it was raining. And I only had a T-shirt. So I decided to stop in at The North 40 and get a new bunnyhug, cause I kinda need one and I've wanted to get one of those ones with the definition of bunnyhug on them for a long while now.

So I got one, and then we got pizza because that was the special in Ag today. Man. Good pizza. I felt better almost right away. Still not awesome but definitely doing better. Got back to the office and the bunnyhug I got was waay too big. I don't know why I thought XL was a good idea. Or why I didn't try it on. So I'll exchange it tomorrow because I didn't have time at lunch and they close the same time FMD shuts down. Oh well. The afternoon was pretty mundane as far as I can remember right now so I'll skip ahead.

I was going to go to the German Club with Mom and Oma this evening, it's the reopening of the Lounge. Buuuuut I was in no shape for a lounge. Sad face. But now it's open so hey, future dates!

Got a haircut! I know, right? Jacie and I were finally able to line up right and she made me all handsome. I said short and gave her full control to make me awesome as she saw fit. Ironically she gave me a Caesar, because they're always sexy, and is also the same cut I used to get all the time before I started growing it out. Guess I was just ahead of the curve. Get it. A head. NVM.

I got home and was talking to Braden but he hadn't looked at me, then he turned and said "AH! It's high school Steve!". That was funny. Will thinks it looks good, so we'll see what the ladies think soon enough. Maybe I'll finally get good at them. Here's to hoping. No alcohol though, I'm on vacation from it for a while.

Then just some Starcraft with Will and Cheap, and now here I am. Tabi got a new iPhone, which is awesome, but now I'm all tech jealous and feel inadequate by comparison. I looked up how to set up her MRU e-mail on it and the new settings for Live mail accounts, so as soon as she calls me again we can get that set up. And she FINALLY got around to putting me on her my-5, so now we can call eachother whenever and it won't cost her anything. Not that I set that up like 3 years ago or anything... Holy shit, I've known Tabi for more than 4 years now. That's mind blowing. I guess it makes sense, though, I started University over 4 years ago. YAY! I don't want to grow up....

It always blows my mind when I think how long I've known my friends. Nick and Braden and Corey and Tony, countess others I've known you guys for 10 years. That's absolutely ridiculous. I guess it happens, I've just never really had it happen before. Sorry Will, you get the young end of the stick, but pending final approval of your application and you'll be on the right road soon enough. Still thinking wow about that.

I've held onto some really great friends. With everyone else that I've weeded out, lost track of, or just pushed away, I think I've made out better than I ever expected I would. With so many awesome people around, more than I could even try and name right now so I won't (though you'll all know who you are anyway), it's hard to think I still feel so lonely sometimes. But I think that's just a void that friends can't fill. It's on the list though. Thanks, everyone, you're all awesome. Let's hang out.

And then our hero ended he recant, posted his post, and fell asleep so he can get up early enough to make coffee and maybe eat some cheerios. Tomorrow is another day, and another story.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

This is a repost of the Facebook note I wrote at the beginning of the year. I love reposts. They're warm.

I've no problem perpetuating the cliche of New Years resolutions. Taking a look back at the past year and thinking critically of what you'd like to change moving forward is a good personal task, and can be very difficult. Looking back at 2010 there's no doubt that it was one of the greatest years ever. I had a great time with some of the greatest people I've known, and that's not something I'm going to change for 2011. There are, however, some things I do want to change moving forward. Lets have a look.

1. Take better care of myself

I could have taken much better care of myself this past year, and moving forward into 2011 I'm going to do a much better job of it, body mind and spirit. This can encompass many things, from working out to reducing stress, but I'm bunching them all up together. The body is a temple, and it needs to be taken care of in many ways.

2. Be more financially responsible

Coming into 2011 I'm legitimately upset at the state of my expenses. I need to be much more conscious of that I do with my money. I'm working hard to focus on school this year, and part of that means not working two jobs and leaving myself with no time to take care of business, and I need to be more mindful of that. Working less means making less, and this year that's going to mean spending less. A LOT less. I'm going to be making a much greater effort to keep track of my budget and make sure I'm not making unnecessary purchases. Sorry, Dave, I won't be playing much poker for a while.

3. Do my best

This one is a little weird. But honestly, I don't try very hard most of the time. I'm going to make a greater effort in 2011, school is one of the important things I need to do my best at and I'm glad I got off to a good start in September. Doing my best applies to everything though, at both the above mentioned goals, and anything I come across as the year goes on. No more half-assing, 2011 is going to see Steve running on more cylinders and doing his best all year long.

4. Keep organized

Here's a holdover from last year. In 2010 I kept more organized than in 2009, but 2011 is going to see see further improvements, and it's going to be a big part of making sure my other goals don't get neglected.

5. Get to know myself

One of my resolutions from last year was to find someone to do everything in 2010 with. In many ways I found a lot of people do make that happen, but not in the way I was looking for. But over the course of 2010 I realized that it's going to be hard to get to know someone who I want to get to know me if I'm not very sure of who I am to begin with. For 2011 I want to get to know myself better, and become more comfortable with who I am. It's not about finding the best version of myself, but combining all the versions of myself into one person that I have a grasp on being. This one might be the most difficult of all, but I think that more than my other goals for 2011, it may be the most important and also most rewarding. And I'm sure there will be many people to come along on this journey with me.

So those are my resolutions for 2011. Of course there are other things I'd like to get done this year. I still want to travel, I still want to write, I still want to experience things. But above are what I'm considering the most boiled down resolutions I have, and by the time 2012 rolls around I hope to be and improved person, inside and out, and I'm sure I'll resolve to improve upon what I'll do this year.

I look forward to spending time with you all in 2011, there's definitely some of you I want to see more. Until then, happy new year, lets all make it the best yet.